Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986)
Quick Summary
Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) was a philosopher and major figure in history. Born in Paris, France, Simone de Beauvoir left a lasting impact through Authored The Second Sex, a foundational feminist philosophical treatise.
Birth
January 9, 1908 Paris, France
Death
April 14, 1986 Paris, France
Nationality
French
Occupations
Complete Biography
Origins And Childhood
Simone-Lucie-Ernestine-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born into a Parisian bourgeois Catholic family on Boulevard Raspail. Her father Georges fostered a love for literature and theater, while her mother Françoise upheld strict piety. The family's post–World War I financial decline exposed Beauvoir to the precarity of privilege and sharpened her sense of social constraint. A stellar student at the Cours Désir, she gradually abandoned Catholic faith, turning instead to literature and philosophy as sources of meaning. Her intense friendship with Élisabeth 'Zaza' Lacoin shaped her teenage years; Lacoin's death in 1929 became a lifelong trauma and a symbol of the oppressive expectations imposed on young bourgeois women, later recounted in Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter.
Education And Early Writings
After excelling in philosophy in high school, Beauvoir studied at the Sorbonne and the Institut catholique de Paris, then audited courses at the École normale supérieure. Preparing for the competitive agrégation exam alongside Paul Nizan, René Maheu, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre, she placed second in 1929, the youngest philosophy agrégée in France. Her early teaching posts in Marseille, Rouen, and Paris allowed her to experiment with pedagogies of freedom while drafting journals and fiction that probed moral dilemmas of interwar Europe, foreshadowing her existential ethics.
Existentialism And Sartre
Beauvoir's partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre was intellectual and affective. Together they developed an existentialist conception of freedom rooted in responsibility and engagement. During the 1930s and the German Occupation they gathered daily at Parisian cafés such as the Flore and the Dôme with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Raymond Aron, and Albert Camus. Suspended briefly from teaching during the war over allegations later dismissed, Beauvoir contributed to the intellectual resistance and broadcast for French radio. In 1945 she co-founded the journal Les Temps modernes, a key forum for postwar debates. Her novels She Came to Stay (L'Invitée) and The Blood of Others explored personal accountability under wartime oppression.
The Second Sex
Published in 1949 in two volumes—"Facts and Myths" and "Lived Experience"—The Second Sex combined phenomenology, history, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and literature to demonstrate how women are constructed as the "Other" relative to a supposedly universal male subject. Condemned by conservative and Catholic critics and placed on the Vatican's Index, the book nonetheless became a publishing sensation. Its signature claim, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," advanced an existentialist understanding of gender as contingent, highlighting economic, sexual, and political conditions necessary for emancipation. The work influenced thinkers from Betty Friedan and Kate Millett to bell hooks and Judith Butler.
Political Engagements
Beauvoir campaigned against French colonialism in Indochina and Algeria, denouncing torture and supporting national liberation. She signed petitions, delivered speeches, and published forceful essays in Les Temps modernes. Her travels to the United States connected her with civil-rights leaders such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X. She backed the May 1968 student uprisings, co-signed the Manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian War, and the 1971 Manifesto of the 343 advocating abortion rights. She helped found the Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF) and later chaired the Ligue des droits de la femme.
Travels And Global Networks
International travel expanded Beauvoir's comparative perspective. Multiple stays in the United States fostered her relationship with novelist Nelson Algren and informed America Day by Day (1948). Journeys to Maoist China with Sartre in 1955 produced the reportage The Long March. Lecture tours through Brazil, the Soviet Union, Scandinavia, and Italy connected her to feminist intellectuals including Marguerite Duras, Gisèle Halimi, and Angela Davis. These exchanges linked women's struggles to anticolonial and socialist movements worldwide.
Memoirs And Autobiography
From the late 1950s onward, Beauvoir produced a four-volume autobiographical cycle—Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958), The Prime of Life (1960), Force of Circumstance (1963), and All Said and Done (1972). Blending introspection, political analysis, and cultural history, these memoirs redefined life writing by centering female subjectivity as a site of knowledge. Extensive correspondence with Sartre, Nelson Algren, and filmmaker Claude Lanzmann further illuminated her emotional and intellectual communities.
Reception And Controversies
Criticism of Beauvoir's work arrived from multiple directions: conservative and Catholic commentators denounced The Second Sex as immoral, while some Marxists accused her of downplaying class struggle. Later debates scrutinized her personal relationships, pedagogical practices, and sexual politics within the existentialist circle. Scholarship since the 1990s, however, has emphasized the coherence of her moral philosophy, her materialist critique of domination, and her methodological contributions to gender sociology. The 2009 unabridged English translation of The Second Sex reignited international engagement with her ideas.
Later Years
Following Sartre's death in 1980, Beauvoir published Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre, reflecting on aging, illness, and companionship. She continued advocating for older women's rights, hosted activists and scholars at her apartment on Rue Schoelcher, and remained a visible public intellectual. She died of pneumonia on 14 April 1986. Her funeral at Montparnasse Cemetery drew fellow intellectuals, political leaders, and feminist activists; she is interred beside Sartre, whose grave remains a pilgrimage site.
Legacy
Beauvoir's synthesis of philosophy, literature, reportage, and activism continues to influence continental philosophy, feminist theory, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, and literary criticism. Her analyses of freedom, alterity, and oppression inform feminist movements from the 1970s to contemporary intersectional campaigns. Her archives, preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Sartre-Beauvoir Research Center, support ongoing scholarship, conferences, and critical editions that sustain her international legacy.
Achievements and Legacy
Major Achievements
- Authored The Second Sex, a foundational feminist philosophical treatise
- Co-founded Les Temps modernes, a leading existentialist journal
- Advocated for decolonization, civil rights, and reproductive freedom
- Renewed autobiographical writing with a landmark four-volume memoir
Historical Legacy
Simone de Beauvoir remains a global touchstone for existentialist philosophy, feminist theory, and engaged literature. Her analyses of alterity continue to inform scholarship, pedagogy, and activism, while her memoirs offer an unparalleled chronicle of twentieth-century intellectual life.
Detailed Timeline
Major Events
Birth
Born 9 January in Paris to a bourgeois Catholic family
Philosophy agrégation
Placed second in the national philosophy agrégation alongside Jean-Paul Sartre
Les Temps modernes
Co-founded the existentialist review with Sartre
The Second Sex
Published the two-volume feminist landmark
Manifesto of the 343
Signed the declaration demanding legal abortion in France
Death
Died in Paris and was buried at Montparnasse Cemetery
Geographic Timeline
Famous Quotes
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."
"Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay."
"Feminism is a way of living individually and fighting collectively."
External Links
Frequently Asked Questions
Quand est née et morte Simone de Beauvoir ?
Elle est née le 9 janvier 1908 à Paris et est décédée le 14 avril 1986 dans la même ville, après près de six décennies d'activité intellectuelle ininterrompue.
Quel est l'apport principal du Deuxième Sexe ?
Publié en 1949, l'essai démontre que la féminité est une construction historique, sociale et culturelle, analyse les mécanismes d'oppression et propose une éthique existentialiste de la liberté pour les femmes.
Quelle relation entretenait-elle avec Jean-Paul Sartre ?
Beauvoir et Sartre formaient un couple intellectuel libre fondé sur un pacte d'indépendance affective et créative ; ils ont cofondé la revue Les Temps modernes et partagé engagements politiques et débats philosophiques.
Quels combats politiques a-t-elle soutenus ?
Elle s'est engagée pour l'anticolonialisme, la décolonisation de l'Algérie, les droits civiques aux États-Unis, la légalisation de la contraception et de l'avortement en France, ainsi que la lutte contre les violences faites aux femmes.
Quelles sources renseignent sa vie et sa pensée ?
Ses mémoires, sa correspondance avec Sartre et Nelson Algren, les archives de Les Temps modernes, ainsi que les biographies de Deirdre Bair et Kate Kirkpatrick, éclairent ses trajectoires intellectuelles et militantes.
Sources and Bibliography
Primary Sources
- Simone de Beauvoir — Le Deuxième Sexe
- Simone de Beauvoir — Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée
- Simone de Beauvoir — Correspondance avec Jean-Paul Sartre
Secondary Sources
- Deirdre Bair — Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography ISBN: 9781439136256
- Kate Kirkpatrick — Becoming Beauvoir ISBN: 9781408896099
- Toril Moi — Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman ISBN: 9780195154443
External References
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